


The Nice Guys Deliver

by LemuelCork



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 14:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13010148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemuelCork/pseuds/LemuelCork
Summary: Holly hooks her dad up with a potential client, leading to a case that reaches back decades.





	The Nice Guys Deliver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wildlives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildlives/gifts).



“Now, let me do all the talking,” March said and popped a Tic Tac, though why he bothered, he didn’t know – this was the Sunny Acres Retirement Village, not the Boom Boom Room on a Friday night. Though it was Friday night. Habits die hard.

Behind him, Jackson Healy shrugged, which was what he’d been doing a lot lately. It’s what you did when the man instructing you in the finer points of the detective business didn’t so much seem to know those finer points as to make them up to suit himself. Like when March had told him, after the Benelli brothers finally paid off, that partners – detective partners – always split 60/40, with the senior partner getting the 60, even if it was the junior partner who’d shaken the cash loose from the more recalcitrant Benelli brother ( _Recalcitrant_ , noun: stubbornly uncooperative or defiant), while the senior partner did nothing but hold the more scared shitless Benelli brother at gunpoint. You shrugged at times like that because some things weren’t worth fighting over, though of course some things were, and Holland March sometimes walked awfully close to the line between the two.

And behind Healy, Holly March, her father’s namesake but as unlike her old man as a child could possibly be (female, for one thing; honest, for another; brave; and, you know, actually intelligent), rolled her eyes, which was something she’d been doing not just lately but probably for the past dozen years, given that she’d recently turned thirteen.

“ _I_ brought you the case,” Holly said. “I’m the one who told you about it—”

“And that’s terrific, sweetheart, but now it’s daddy’s job to get all the details out of the client.” By _details_ , March meant _money_. Extracting fat checks from skinny widows was his specialty. And he knew that, left to her own impulses, Holly would have made him do this case _pro bono_ , which was Latin for _Why not just cut a hole in your fucking pocket, you’ve got no need for a wallet anyway_.

The woman who came to the door wasn’t skinny, exactly – March got a flash of some not-so-bad gazongas before she pulled the knit shawl over what March supposed a woman of her age would call her décolletage – and if Holly’s prep work had been reliable (and come on, this was Holly we were talking about, of course it had been reliable) the woman wasn’t a widow, exactly, either.

“Holland March,” he said, extending one hand confidently and pulling his most charming puppy-dog smile out of his kit. “My daughter tells me—”

“Yeah,” the not-quite-a-widow said, turning and heading for the sideboard, where a cut-glass decanter sat beside a matching set of tumblers. Her voice was a sharp, smoky growl, like it could’ve been used to cut those tumblers. “Your daughter’s a smart cookie. I like her very much.”

“Oh, me too,” March said, stepping in after her. “And yes, I’d love one.” The woman looked up from the glass she’d just poured. “If you’re offering. A drink, I mean.”

“Help yourself,” she growled, and left the decanter unstoppered. She downed her own glass as she walked over to Holly. “How’re you doing, kid?”

“My dad said I should let him do all the talking,” Holly said.

The woman cast a narrow-eyed glare back at March, who was in mid-swallow. “Don’t ever let a man tell you what to do. Especially not your father.” She moved on. “And who are you, tall-dark-and-handsome?”

Jackson Healy shrugged.

“All right, Mr. March,” she said, “since you seem to have browbeat these two into silence, why don’t you do whatever talking it is you wanted to do?”

“No, no, I’m here to listen,” March said. “To you. First, I mean. I’ll tell you about, you know, rates and so forth, but that’s…later. Just, can we, um… Who is it you’re looking for, exactly? A friend of your husband?”

“I never married, Mr. March.”

And that would be was why she wasn’t a widow. “A friend of your, uh—”

“My lover,” she said. “That’s what he was, and a good one too. We’d been together going on fifty years, on and off. Never gave me a ring, but what he did give me was worth more.”

“What was that?” Holly asked.

“Really good orgasms,” the old lady said.

“Okay,” Holly said.

“Time out,” March said, making a T with his hands. “That’s enough of that. Let’s get back to—”

“You’ll learn to appreciate it,” the old lady told Holly, “once you’ve been with a lot of men. You’ll realize how few of them can do it.”

Holly nodded.

“Getting back to the job,” March said.

“Henry died last month,” she said. “He would’ve been ninety next year, but you’d never have known it. He had it to the end.”

“Had what?” Holly asked.

“Shouldn’t you be watching the door or something?” March asked his daughter. “You know, security?”

“No, I want to hear this,” Holly said.

March turned to the apartment’s occupant. “Mrs. Larson—”

“ _Ms._ Larson. Billie.”

“Billie,” March said. “Who is it that you want us to find for you?”

“Henry had a good friend,” Billie Larson said. “Partner, I should say. Hooker.”

No one said anything for a moment, until Healy finally spoke up. “His friend was a hooker?”

Billie rolled her eyes. “The man’s name was Hooker, Johnny Hooker. They worked together back in the day, back in Chicago, before they had a falling out, went their separate ways. Henry didn’t speak Johnny’s name once in the past twenty years. But when he died, I found this.” She reached into a nightstand drawer and came back with a sealed envelope. Written on the front in block letters, _FOR JOHNNY HOOKER, WHEN I’M GONE. DO NOT OPEN._

“And do you have any idea where this, um, Hooker might be?” March asked, taking the envelope and turning it over in his hands.

“You’re the detective, Mr. March. Your daughter said you’re good at what you do.”

“She said that? About me?”

“I said you’d solved some cases,” Holly muttered.

“Well, she’s right about that,” March said, “but even the best detective needs a lead or two to start from…”

Healy made a sound that could’ve been the start of a word, or maybe even a sentence, but March shushed him before it could become either. Healy settled back on his heels and waited.

“Here’s the last address Henry had for him,” Billie said, and handed over a slip of paper. “But it’s twenty years out of date.”

“That’s fine.” March took the slip, glanced at it. “Now as for our rates—”

“Rates?” Billie laughed, and it was like an engine turning over. “Holly said you’d help _pro bono_.”

March sent a stare his daughter’s way. It wasn’t full of love. “She did?”

“Yes, she did. And it’s a good thing, because if you haven’t noticed, I’m an old lady living in a retirement home.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call you _old_ …”

Billie rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea what it costs to live here? I wasn’t a Rockefeller when I got here, and that was years ago. Before we got Jimmy Carter, and inflation.”

“Sadly,” March said, “my daughter’s not aware of all the cases we’re working on at present—”

“She said you haven’t had one for a couple of months.”

March looked from Billie to Holly and back again.

“Let me confer with my partner a moment,” March said.

#

“Where’d you even meet this old lady?” March wanted to know.

Holly explained. “It was a school project, we all got partnered up with an old person here at the home. She was mine.”

“And you offered my services _pro bono_?”

“She’s a nice lady,” Holly said.

“Eating is nice, too. You like eating, right? You know, meals?”

Holly rolled her eyes.

“You know what else is nice sometimes? Paying the rent. On time. You know, before someone sends a big guy to the house to collect it, or to break your arm if you haven’t got the money.” March looked over at Healy. “No offense.”

Healy shrugged.

March tossed the envelope on his palm. It didn’t feel heavy. It didn’t feel light. It felt like an envelope. The question was, did he feel like a delivery boy? An unpaid delivery boy. To an address twenty years out of date. Maybe, he thought, he should just open the envelope, take a look at what was in it. Maybe that would shed some light on the job, or give him some idea where this Hooker might be, or give him a reason for bothering with the whole thing. At least it would satisfy his curiosity.

He stuck his thumb under the flap, preparatory to tearing it open.

“What are you doing?” Holly screamed. “That’s not yours!”

“Honey,” March said.

“Here, hand it over,” she said, grabbing onto the other end of the envelope. “At least steam it open so no one can tell you did it. I’ll show you how.”

“I know how to steam an envelope,” March said. “I’m a professional detective.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because I don’t care.” He tugged back, trying to pull the envelope out of her hand. “It’s not like we’re ever going to find the guy, after twenty years.”

“Then why’d you take the job?”

“I thought she’d pay us!”

Healy cleared his throat. He’d been standing in one place an awfully long time, and though he didn’t particularly mind that – a lot of life was just standing around, and generally speaking, one place was as good as another – it seemed to him that maybe he should interject (verb: to insert into a conversation, between other remarks) a bit of information he’d tried to share earlier.

“I know where he is,” Healy said.

The other two stopped.

“You what?” March said.

“I know,” Healy said, “where he is. Johnny Hooker. Yeah.”

“You know... Wait. Why would you know?”

Healy said, “From Chicago. Everyone heard about Hooker. In a certain crowd, I mean. People I worked with.”

“People you worked with,” March said. “Doing what, breaking kneecaps?”

“Fingers, sometimes. You know, it varied.”

“You were in Chicago? I thought you always lived in L.A.”

“You knew I’m from New York originally,” Healy said.

“Sure, originally, but I thought you’d been here since you were, what, eighteen? The avocado farm and all that.”

“Yeah, but I spent a summer in Chicago.”

“Breaking fingers.”

“And kneecaps. Some of each.”

“Wait,” Holly said. “We’re losing the point here. Mr. Healy, do you really know where Johnny Hooker is?”

“I know who he married,” Healy said. “When he moved out here to L.A. And we should be able to find her with no problem. Her name’s on half the museums and hospitals in town.”

#

Gabriella Keyser Drum was the oldest daughter of Emanuel Drum, the oil man, and the only child who survived the old man’s death in a very public shooting incident around WWI, when his wife found him in flagrante with a woman from the governor’s office of drilling permits. Drum, Sr., had been petitioning for years for the right to search for oil on public lands, and while the public official in question hadn’t yet succeeded in getting the governor to sign off on the request, she’d apparently granted Drum a drilling permit on some private wetlands of her own. The gun went off twice in the wife’s hand, and surely she would’ve been tried for the dual murder and perhaps stripped of her inheritance of her husband’s wealth, except for the fact that the gun then went off a third time, making the whole question moot. Gabriella was 24 years old at the time.

Her younger sister had died of complications from the mumps two years earlier.

Gabriella, for all her newfound wealth and sudden celebrity, or maybe because of them, proved to have no taste for the spotlight, and retreated to a quiet life behind the wrought-iron gates of her father’s Brentwood mansion. When the fires came in ’61, she decamped for Sherman Oaks, where her deceased father had left her a second mansion. That was the last time her name had appeared in the newspaper, as far as Holly could tell.

But before that she’d gotten married, Mr. Healy insisted, to a younger man from Chicago, a handsome blonde charmer name of Johnny Hooker, who’d met her on a pier one day and smiled his way into her good graces. That’s the story that had gone around, anyway. The boy from the wrong side of the tracks, no money, a lifetime of bumming around and playing parts in various grifts and cons, not so much of a boy anymore but still handsome at age 58, suddenly ups and vanishes into a life of ease, as consort to a lady of years and means. Everyone figured it for a con – the con to end all cons – but if it was, it was the longest of cons, since it didn’t appear to have ended yet.

Why her marriage didn’t make the papers, Holly couldn’t guess, unless she’d paid to keep it out of there. But it wasn’t so hard to find the address of the Sherman Oaks mansion the elder Drum had constructed back in the sunset years of the previous century. Houses don’t move much, and apparently neither do the daughters of the rich. Holly handed over the address on a sheet of ruled composition paper torn from one of her school notebooks, and was rewarded for her labors with a pat on the head.

“I’m coming with you,” she insisted, and her father shot that right down with a look as pointed as the wide collars of his paisley shirt.

“Honey, I told you, I need you to stay here with Mrs. Larson,” March said. Holly looked to Healy for succor, but found none. She’d have to work on the whole playing-one-off-against-the-other thing. She kept waiting for it to work, and it hadn’t yet.

“But…what for? She doesn’t know anything!”

“She might be in danger,” March said.

“Really,” Holly said. “That’s why you’re leaving me with her. Because you think it might be _dangerous_ here. That’s…great, you know, just incredible parenting right there.”

“Holly,” Healy said, “you know your dad doesn’t mean that. He thinks it might be dangerous where _we’re_ going—”

“Oh, I know,” Holly said. “But that’s not what he said. He said he wanted me in danger.”

“Are we going to leave, already?” March said, raising his wristwatch in the air to show it was already half past whatever. “Because if we’re not, I’m gonna just go get a drink somewhere and open this fucking envelope.”

“Fine,” Holly said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Maybe you’ll find a clue here,” her dad told her.

“I’m going to ask Ms. Larson all about orgasms,” Holly said.

“Don’t you dare,” March said.

#

The gate was wrought iron, all right, and didn’t look like it had been updated over the past century with a buzzer or a bell or a video camera or any of the other newfangled gadgetry that had improved the whole wrought-iron-gate industry since Old Man Drum had built this place. Nor was there a servant in the guardhouse shack on the other side of the gate, sitting in wait to check credentials and say no when you wanted to be let in. The shack was empty, and Healy and March looked in vain for any way to communicate with the big white-shuttered Georgian house on the top of the hill.

“Mr. Hooker,” Healy called, not precisely at the top of his lungs, just casually, but not what you’d call quietly either. “Mr. Hooker, it’s Jack Healy, I’m a friend of Mitch Dubois, from Chicago? Well, friend’s putting it a little strong. I used to work for him. This was a lot of years ago—”

“What are you doing?” March asked. “He can’t hear you.”

“We don’t know that,” Healy said.

“You’re talking to the air,” March said.

“Maybe,” Healy said, “maybe not. Mr. Hooker! Mitch told me about it when you got married, it was all over the street, all the guys were talking about it, how you landed this big fish and how long would it be before you’d bled her dry—”

“Now that’s tactful,” March said. “He’ll certainly want to let us in now.”

“You said he couldn’t hear us,” Healy said.

“Well, if he can, he’ll certainly let us in now. I mean, what if she’s in there too?”

“She’d be, what, almost ninety years old? You think she can hear?”

“I don’t think anyone can hear,” March said. “Except me, because you’re shouting in my ear.”

“This isn’t shouting,” Healy said. “Mr. Hooker!”

“Jesus,” March said, and Healy shouted louder, “Mr. Hooker! We’ve got something for you, from your old friend Henry. Henry Gondorff. An envelope, his girlfriend Billie gave it to us—”

Something clicked, then.

Not in Healy’s mind, you understand, nor in March’s. In the gate. Some latch somewhere unlatched, and the whole heavy black metal thing swung inwards with a gruesome creak of long-unoiled hinges. March looked at Healy and Healy looked at March, and then they both stepped through.

#

“I don’t know what to tell you, kid. It’s like this big wave building up inside you, you feel it growing, like it’s going to crash all over you – in a good way,” Billie Larson said.

“You feel this in your vagina?” Holly asked her. “Or all over your whole body?”

Before Ms. Larson could answer, a knock came at her door, and Holly leaped into action, darting to conceal herself behind the door and putting a finger to her lips. On the way she grabbed one of Ms. Larson’s canes from an umbrella stand and now she was holding it two-handed like Manny Mota facing Candelaria at the plate.

But when Ms. Larson swung the door open, Holly realized she’d chosen the wrong side to stand on. _Hinges_ , she thought. _Next time._

The man on the other side of the door was quite elderly, older than Ms. Larson, and he stood with one hand on a cane of his own, staring at Holly with an expression that combined alarm, confusion, and, upon realizing his prospective assailant was 13 years old, relief. “Expecting someone else? Or do you greet all visitors this way?”

“Oh, this,” Holly said, and lowered the raised cane. “Just can’t be too careful these days. Muggers and stuff.”

“She’s from the local junior high, Eddie,” Ms. Larson said. “Brought her dad to help me with something.”

“Batting practice?”

“Ha,” Holly said, blushing.

“Listen, Billie, I can come back another time,” Eddie said. “I don’t want to bother you when you’ve got a guest. I just thought…”

“No, you can come on in,” Holly said. “Don’t let me get in the way.” She saw the old people exchanging a look and felt like the thirdest third wheel ever. “Would you like me to go down to the cafeteria for a while? They have jello today.”

“This may surprise you,” Eddie said, “but they have jello every day.”

“Well, that’s great,” Holly said, “because I’m a big fan of, uh, gelatin-based desserts.” She let herself out, shut the door behind her. Whatever her dad wanted her to protect Ms. Larson from (assuming he actually thought there was something to protect her from at all), it wasn’t the attentions of a guy like Eddie, who brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “old boyfriend.” Holly wondered, had he been in the picture when Henry was still alive? Just how many men did Billie Larson have in her life, anyway? It was kind of inspiring. Eighty-two years old and still, you know.

Like a wave. Building up and crashing.

It was something to think about over her jello for sure.

#

Johnny Hooker’s hair was still the right side of grey, if only just barely: a faint wheat color atop a craggy face and blue eyes that still sparkled when they looked at you. Which was saying something, given that he was looking at two men who were just there to deliver an envelope. But something about him…it just drew you in.

He walked Healy and March in from the front door, offered them a drink at the bar by the fireplace. March accepted, Healy passed.

“Henry Gondorff, huh?”

“That’s what she told us.”

“And how is the old bastard?” Hooker winced when he asked it, as if he knew what the answer was going to be.

“I’m sorry,” Healy said. “She told us he died.”

“Well.” Hooker upended his glass, tossed down a mouthful of scotch. It looked like the good stuff. March took a taste from his glass. It was the good stuff. “To absent friends,” Hooker said.

March raised his glass and made short work of its contents.

“How’d it happen?”

“She didn’t say,” Healy said.

“Well, he wasn’t a kid.” Hooker poured himself another short glass. He left the bottle open on the bar. “Must’ve been in his forties when I met him, and that was in ’36. At least ten years older than my wife.”

“Where is your wife, anyway?” March asked, moving in on the bottle. Never turn down a refill was, what, the fourth commandment? Fifth at the very most.

“Forest Lawn,” Hooker said.

“I’m sorry,” Healy said again.

Hooker shook his head. “It was time. Couldn’t breathe without a tank, at the end. I’ll be joining her soon enough.” He fixed Healy with a stare, and suddenly the eye didn’t have sparkle in it so much as steel. “You said Mitch and the boys were wondering when I’d take her money and leave her?”

“Some people were saying things like that.”

“You let them know I loved my wife,” Johnny Hooker said. “This was no con. She was a beautiful woman and I miss her every day.”

“Did all right for yourself, though,” March said, waving at the mahogany walls and velvet-upholstered chairs.

Hooker shrugged. “You can be happy in a flophouse. If your family’s there with you.”

March pulled the envelope from his inside jacket pocket. “This is what she gave us. We didn’t open it. Not even, you know, steamed it open. In case you were wondering.”

Hooker looked at him. “Why would you do that?”

“No reason,” March said.

Hooker tore open one short end of the envelope, pulled out what looked like a handwritten letter. He stood and read it while March and Healy waited. The first two pages were filled to the bottom, the third only halfway. They could see the big signature through the paper, and they could see when Hooker got to it because he looked up into the middle distance and stared a while. Then a chuckle bubbled up from somewhere and burst on Hooker’s lips.

“You old bastard,” Hooker said softly. “Always thought you could smell a mark. And couldn’t let one go.”

“Well, uh,” March said, trying to decide what remark was most likely to get this obviously well-heeled fellow to part with something more than a drink or two as thanks for delivering a dying message from his old pal, “I’m glad we were able to, um, bring you this, um, valuable last letter from—”

“Gentlemen,” Hooker said, and, approaching them, put an arm over each of their shoulders. “If you’re up for it, I think you can do me another favor.”

“Favor?” March didn’t mean for his voice to express such disdain in just two syllables, but in fairness, that was his least favorite word in the English language.

“Don’t worry, Mr. March,” Hooker said. “There’ll be something in it for you.”

#

As they drove back to Sunny Acres, March tried not to think about the last time they’d driven in a convertible with an attaché case full of money on the back seat. It hadn’t ended well that time. Of course, it hadn’t been actual money that time either, so when the attaché case had gone flying and its contents wound up all over the highway, no one was the poorer for it. This time—

This time they’d seen the money with their own eyes, neatly banded stacks of hundreds, and wasn’t that a sight? Hooker had shown them, then closed and locked the case, and Healy had passed the seatbelt strap through the case’s handle, and now March was driving carefully. He’d never observed the speed limit before in his life, but by god, he was observing it now.

“What do you think?” Healy asked him.

“About what?”

“What we’re doing,” Healy said. “This.”

“I think delivering an attaché case for a thousand bucks is better than delivering an envelope for nothing.”

Healy nodded. That was reasonable enough. He’d taken less money for doing more and worse. “But,” he said, “what if the guy doesn’t accept it?”

“Dreiser?” March said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Who sells a piece of land that’s been in his family his whole life to a couple of guys he doesn’t know who show up with a briefcase full of cash?”

“Hey,” March said, “don’t ask me. I never understood the whole idea of selling land to begin with. Like, who owns land? You can’t own land. That’s the planet. That’s not yours.”

“I think actually you can,” Healy said. “Own land. You can do that.”

“I don’t think so,” March said.

“I’m pretty sure.” They drove a while in silence. Finally Healy said, “Then why would you think Dreiser would take the money? If you don’t think you can sell land.”

“Wouldn’t you? Take the money?”

“Not for something that isn’t mine to sell,” Healy said.

Well, that was the difference between them right there. March just kept on driving.

Beside him, Healy was thinking about the letter.

Hooker had let them read it. It had been short and sweet. Billie had been seeing this guy on the side, this Dreiser, and that was fine with Gondorff, no skin off his nose, Billie’d never been what you’d call exclusive…though maybe it got under Gondorff’s skin just a little, since he’d gone and done some digging into just who this Dreiser was, and he’d uncovered a tract of land in the guy’s family going back to the 1840s, a hundred-some-odd acres of worthless scrubland out in the desert, land Dreiser had tried more than once to sell, to help pay his Sunny Acres bills, but even dropping the price repeatedly hadn’t drummed up any offers. Desert was desert, after all, just sun and dirt and rock and bleached coyote skulls, and who wanted it?

Only maybe, Gondorff wrote, this patch of desert was not quite as worthless as everyone thought. He’d had some people look at it, people Gondorff knew and trusted, people Hooker would remember, though the names had meant nothing to Healy. The Dreisers had tried mining for silver on this godforsaken spot twice and come up dry both times, and an attempt to bring in water and farm on it in the ’50s had been a bust. But had they ever tried drilling for oil? They had not. And while Gondorff didn’t know shale from shinola himself, the rock man he’d brought in to run a test, Sammy from the Gulf, had said it was down there for sure – you’d have to drill deep, but it was there.

Gondorff had hoped to go after it himself, snap the land up cheap and bag a gusher, but if you’re reading this, Johnny, it means I’m…et cetera. And maybe with your connections now in the Drum family, maybe you’re the better man go after it anyway. Consider this just a little tip of the hat from one old friend to another. No reason my death should let a mark like Dreiser off the hook, right? Yours sincerely, Henry.

Right. Tip of the hat, passing a good lead to an old buddy. Plus Dreiser had been screwing Gondorff’s lady friend, and this was a way to screw him right back. Healy figured that had to weigh into the equation, too.

It had certainly seemed to weigh into Hooker’s decision. He’d quietly excused himself, leaving the boys alone with the fireplace, the velvet chairs, and the empty bottle of whiskey – not empty when Hooker left the room, but empty by the time he returned. He’d come back toting the attaché case and had shown them what it contained. Three hundred thousand dollars, fifty thousand more than the last price Gondorff knew Dreiser had been asking. But less than one-tenth of what the oil under the land would bring in. One-tenth? Fuck. These were OPEC days, and no telling when the sheikhs in the Middle East would shut off the spigots again. One one-hundredth. One one-thousandth. This was 1977, and oil was worth more than gold.

“What do you want us to do, exactly?” Healy had asked, and Hooker had been plain: buy it. The man was trying to sell his land. Buy it from him. Simple as that.

“You realize we could just keep driving,” March volunteered now as they neared the turnoff for Sunny Acres. “Three hundred thousand dollars. I’m just pointing that out.”

“What about the detective’s code,” Healy said, “all that stuff you’ve been telling me about serving your client’s interest? You think running away with his money would serve his interest?”

“It would serve ours,” March said. But he took the exit.

#

Holly saw them coming in the front door, set down her spoon, and darted up to meet them. “So? Did you find him?”

“We found him,” her dad said.

“And he gave you that?” She pointed at the briefcase. March nodded. “What’s in it?”

“Bowling balls,” her dad said.

“You’re hilarious,” Holly said.

“Three hundred thousand dollars,” said Healy.

“You two,” Holly said. “You really deserve each other.”

“Hey, Holly,” March said, “you ever hear your friend Billie talk about a man named Dreiser? Ed Dreiser?”

“I don’t know about Dreiser,” Holly said, “but there’s a guy named Eddie up with her right now.” She saw the two men exchange a glance and head toward the elevator. “I don’t know that you want to interrupt them. They might be—”

March turned to her. “Might be what?”

“You know,” Holly said. “Having sex.”

“How old is this Eddie?”

“I want to say ninety?”

He pushed the elevator button. “I’ll take my chances.”

#

Billie opened the door, and if her hair did look a little more tousled than before, who could say what had caused that? The old man behind her had his shirt buttoned and his pants on and Holland March wasn’t asking any questions.

“Ed Dreiser?” he said, and the man nodded.

“Do I know you?”

“No,” March said. “But your friend here’s a friend of my daughter.”

“Do I know your daughter?”

Holly gave a little wave. “I’m his daughter.”

“Ah, our little Babe Ruth there,” Eddie said. “All becomes clear.”

“Mr. Dreiser, we understand you’ve got a parcel of land you’ve been trying to unload for some time.”

“And where’d you hear that?”

“Doesn’t really matter,” March said. “What matters is, we know someone who’s willing to take it off your hands.”

“That’s valuable land, Mr….”

“March.”

“It’s valuable land, Mr. March. I’m not going to give it away to some stranger for a song.”

March set the attaché case down on top of a chest of drawers and popped the locks. “Who said anything about a song?” He flipped open the case and you could hear the collective intake of breath in the room as the view of tan leather gave way to green-and-white paper. “This is more like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”

March was a little sorry when Dreiser reached over and closed the case again. It had been such a lovely sight.

Dreiser said, “Why don’t we discuss this somewhere a little more private?” Which March thought would mean the old man’s apartment, but after a brief stop there to pick up a bulging leather folder, Dreiser led them downstairs and out into the building’s rear courtyard. It was a breezy day, high 60s, cloudless sky – your typical December weather when you lived in L.A. A few other geriatric residents were taking slow, careful turns around the grounds, but Dreiser led March and Healy to a corner where they had some privacy.

“This land has been in my family for generations,” Dreiser said, patting the leather folder. “You have to understand what it means to me. I couldn’t part with it under any circumstances for less than half a million dollars.”

March smiled. “I know for a fact you were asking a quarter million back in April – and didn’t get it.”

“That was what you might call a lapse in judgment, Mr. March. I’m glad it didn’t sell at that price. That would’ve been the biggest mistake of my life.”

Healy cleared his throat. “This could be too. If you walk away from this offer.”

“Are you…are you _threatening_ me, young man?”

Had he been? Sometimes things came out that way, almost like a reflex. “Not at all,” Healy said. “Just saying you might regret walking away. If no one else is offering anything.”

“I’m in no rush,” Dreiser said.

“All due respect,” March said, “exactly how old are you…?”

“Point taken,” Dreiser said.

“There’s three hundred thousand dollars in this case,” March said. “That’s ten percent more than you were asking this spring.”

“Twenty percent,” Healy muttered.

“Twenty? Are you sure?”

Healy nodded.

“Because I thought…”

“I was in the loan business,” Healy said. “It’s twenty percent.”

“See?” March said, turning back to Dreiser. “Even better. Twenty percent.” March held the case out by the handle. “Take the money, Mr. Dreiser. Buy your girlfriend something nice.”

Dreiser sighed, then held out the leather folder.

#

Walking out toward the parking lot, the folder under one arm, March was surprised to see Johnny Hooker leaning against an acacia tree. He had his arms folded and was staring off over March’s shoulder.

March looked back, but saw nothing other than Healy in his denim jacket and chinos, pulling shut the half-height metal door in the low fence that surrounded the courtyard. In the distance, Eddie Dreiser was still slowly walking back toward the building, the attaché case in one hand, his cane in the other.

“You been there the whole time?” March asked. “Because we kind of thought we were supposed to deliver this back to you.” He unzipped the folder, glanced in. A lot of folded papers, tightly packed. His eye caught the word “DEED” on one of them, and he was grateful, for once, for his lack of a sense of smell. Papers this old usually stank of mildew. He held the folder out to Hooker.

“Keep it,” Hooker said. “It’s not worth anything.”

“What about the oil? The shale?”

“There’s no oil,” Hooker said.

“But the land, in the desert—”

“There’s no land,” Hooker said.

“But— You just paid— Why did you give him—”

Hooker shrugged and the breeze blew at his hair. “It’s just money.”

“Just money—”

Healy caught up with them, looked from March to Hooker and back again, trying to figure out what he’d missed.

Hooker said, “He needs it more than I do. They both do. And he’d never ask. This is the only way he’d take it, if he thought he’d conned it out of me.”

“Wait, you _know_ that guy?” Healy said, glancing back at the old man’s retreating figure.

“Sure I know him,” Hooker said. A little smile played on his lips. “That’s Henry Gondorff.”

#

They took Holly out to dinner at the Szechuan place she loved, let her order for the three of them, which meant she got bites of mu shu and egg foo yung and Christ only knew what else. March couldn’t tell one of those dishes from the next, but they all tasted decent enough, so what the hell. Made the kid happy.

She was full of questions, none of which March especially felt like answering, but Healy kept answering for the both of them, and before long she knew as much as they did. “Huh,” she said, when it was all out on the table. “Huh.”

And after they’d cracked their fortune cookies and paid the bill and hit the road and gotten Holly toothbrushed and into bed, Healy and March sat up over drinks, a beer and a Yoo-Hoo, and wasn’t that a fucking combination for the ages.

“Do you think we’ll ever wind up like that?” March asked.

Healy shrugged.

“They met, what did he say, forty years ago?”

“Forty-one,” Healy said.

“Forty-one. So forty-one years from now, what’s that? 2017?”

“2018,” Healy said.

“You think we’ll still be working together?”

“The Nice Guys Detective Agency,” Healy said. “Solving cases since 1977.”

March took a swallow of his Rheingold. “You know? I think we did good today.”

“No one died,” Healy said.

“There’s that,” March said.

Healy said, “But did we solve the case?”

“What case?” March said. “We were hired, we delivered. We got paid. Speaking of which.” He slid a hand into his jacket pocket, took out an envelope and tossed it Healy’s way.

Healy counted it.

“Five hundred?”

“Yeah, well.”

“Since when? I thought the senior partner always gets—”

“Call it a Christmas gift,” March said. “You old bastard.”

#


End file.
